Wednesday, June 13, 2007

gearing up for Sonar

As a big fan of electronic music, I am very happy indeed that the SONAR festival has been setting up shop in the MACBA plaza right outside CIDOB's windows. (...Macba is the Contemporary Art Museum, the plaza is technically the Plaza dels Angels, and CIDOB is where I work; photo taken from my boss's terrace.)

SONARis a badass mostly electronic music festival, with other festival-appropriate artistic doodads thrown in. It takes place over the course of a long wknd in June, and while it's not the winter music conference in Miami, it's an event to which many DJs and people 'in the industry' come. After all, it's a great excuse for many of them to come to Barcelona and party, so who's going to turn that down? (And hey, why not make it a longer trip and hop on over to Ibiza?, etc)

The festival has two venues, aside from the many unannounced/underground parties on the beach or in random bars: the aforementioned daytime site in the heart of the Raval neighborhood, where I work; and a larger Fairground area on the other side of Montjuic, where the night sessions go down. In short, it's nonstop craziness for 3, 4, or 7 or 10 days, depending on how long attendees decide to extend their clubbing escapade. (I hate using the word clubbing, but I fear it's the only way to convey the idea to those who aren't 'in the industry'.)

So tomorrow should be a fun day at work, according to my colleagues, because we will be exposed to noise pollution of the highest quality. Actually, I have no idea if the big-ass tent will be playing, like, techno at 2pm, or something more downtempo. But the speakers were industrial strength. I'll keep you updated.